Shahid Afridi’s most closely guarded secret is that more than biting into a ball, he enjoys cricket bats marinated in spicy pudina chutney. More such bizarre tales emerge when Ajith Pillai imagines the secret diary of former Pakistan captain Imran Khan in Outlook magazine.

As I see it, if Afridi really wanted to tear into the seam he could very well have used his nose and no one would have even an inkling of what he was doing! So, I think in the great Pathan tradition, the ICC must accept he did nothing wrong. In fact, he has often confided in me that inhaling the aroma from a cricket ball that’s 30 overs old gives him a buzz.

When a repeat offender is allowed to get away with a rap on the wrists as Shahid Afridi has been for his 'ball biting' incident, the ICC itself brings the game into disrepute, says Suresh menon in his column on Dreamcricket.com.

Not since Chaplin made a gourmet meal of his shoes in Gold Rush has feasting on unexpected objects looked so hilarious on the screen. Chewing on leather in a movie is funny; chewing on leather in a cricket match with the aim of helping a fast bowler is ridiculous. The only thing more ridiculous is the ICC’s gentle rap on the wrist of the player who has been in trouble before for trying to alter the condition of the pitch illegally.

Rohit Mahajan in Outlook magazine wonders if the captain can actually go to the length of biting a cricket ball to make it swing more, what may the team do if they get an opportunity to do it surreptitiously?

It was surely the daftest, most comical thing ever done on a cricket field – and probably the second most infamous bite in the history of sport after Mike Tyson’s attack on Evander Holyfield in 1997...daft though this action is, it can’t be condoned because of that reason – that it was so incredibly stupid. Stupidity can’t justify crime.

After Shahid Afridi attempted to bite the ball during the fifth ODI in Perth, Patrick Kidd writes in the Times that he must be "the stupidest captain in the history of the game".

I wonder what the umpires were saying to him as they pointed out the apparent canine indentations. "Looks like someone's been chewing on this, skipper," one umpire might say. "Gosh, how strange," Afridi says, "was it a stray beaver? I hear there are a lot of beavers in Perth. Or maybe a dingo."

He did not subtly pick at it or try to play football with it, Stuart Broad-style, he wrapped his lips round the ball and gnawed upon it. Was he just peckish? Did he think that the fact he had walked past the umpire a second or two earlier meant that no one would spot him treating a cricket ball like an apple?

In his blog on the Dawn website, Ahsan Butt claims the Test series between Australia and Pakistan was won by Younis Khan. The reasoning was that after the hugely impressive Umar Akmal and Mohammad Aamer, no one’s stature had made greater strides in the last two weeks.

His replacement as captain put in such a shameful display on the fourth morning that it became immediately clear that we would lose. To be honest, I actually wasn’t that upset watching us throw our wickets away, because I basically expected it; the morning session told me everything I needed to know about our mental state. We wanted Australia to give in because we were too afraid of actually having to work to win the game.

Writing in the same paper, Qamar Ahmed believes the current Pakistan squad neither have the gumption nor the guts or the skill to cope with what will be in store in the final Test at Hobart. He predicts a result similar to Melbourne and Sydney.

From 1964 when the first Pakistan team visited Australia led by Hanif Mohammad who scored a hundred in the first innings and was given out when few runs short of another century in the second innings at the MCG in the only Test that Pakistan played to now, our aspirations of a Test series win in Australia thus remains a dream.

	Hauritz and Hussey are just two players owed an apology © AFP

The Sydney Test was the high water mark for exponents of the volte-face, the moment when egg and face were in perfect congress. The time the collective conscience was forced to examine itself, writes Peter Lalor in the Australian.

Selectors gave Hussey the West Indian tour to reassemble his act. He managed a reasonable 47 average across the three Tests, but against a Pakistan attack that has had more teeth than expected he has prospered scoring 82, 4, 28 and the aforementioned 134no. Now you hear that Ricky Ponting using Hussey as an example of how he is going to turn around his own form.

St Michael has found a path from the wilderness and will perform the same miracle for others willing to burn a votive candle at his feet while he climbs atop the massage table and sings the team hymn. And Nathan Hauritz?

Life has come a full circle for Pakistan’s cricket at Sydney. Writing in the Dawn, Saad Shafqat notes that 33 years before last week’s heart-breaking defeat, the SCG had been host to Pakistan’s “most heartwarming Test match”.

Imran Khan took 12 famous wickets under Mushtaq Mohammad’s captaincy and announced Pakistan’s arrival as a frontline Test nation. To millions of Pakistan fans, it felt like a sunrise in Sydney.

Shafqat is confident that Pakistan cricket will overcome the debacle posed by the defeat, having survived several grave crises in the past.

As we try and grope our way through the misery, it is important to remember that cricket is a resilient sport and Pakistan is a resilient country. Pakistan cricket has weathered more turmoil than cricket in any other nation. A forfeited Test match, shameful doping scandals, mysterious death of the national coach and terrorists shooting at a visiting team — it has all happened to Pakistan. In any other country, such onslaught would have wrecked the whole cricket enterprise. In Pakistan, cricket soldiers on.

In the same paper, Ahsan Butt notes that the Sydney catastrophe has firmly put Younis Khan back in the reckoning.

...Younis has his problems. He’s a bit of a baby and he’s too thin-skinned. But while he tends to be emotionally unstable, his mental strength as a batsman is what sets him apart, especially in the second innings of Tests when teams are usually batting under pressure. Think about this: Younis has six second-innings hundreds (out of 16 overall) and his second-innings average is only three runs lower than his overall average. As a comparison, Yousuf only has four second-innings hundreds out of 24 overall, and his average drops off by eleven. Sachin Tendulkar has 11 second-innings hundreds out of 43 overall, and his average drops off by 12. Younis plays well when the pressure is really on – and we all know the pressure was on in Sydney.

After the heroics of the opening two days, the Pakistani hare looked around and suddenly found the Australian tortoise right behind him, writes Dileep Premachandran in the Guardian.

Mystifyingly, Pakistan were just as defensive, with Yousuf having as many as eight men on the fence at times. Hussey declined the easy singles on offer, instead finding the ropes intermittently as the lead slowly mounted. If he was bemused by Yousuf's we-shall-bore-you-out tactics, he didn't show it, easing past a hundred and well beyond. On air, the venerable Richie Benaud called Yousuf's captaincy "inexplicable". The millions who had woken up before dawn in Pakistan would surely have agreed.

Peter Roebuck writes in the Sydney Morning Herald that Australia's remarkable win in Sydney looks on paper like one of their most glorious victories, but figures can be deceiving.

And yet there was an emptiness about it. It was as much an abject defeat for Pakistan as it was a victory for a determined home side. Had the visitors played with even a modicum of skill and sense or pursued even remotely acceptable tactics, the match could not have been lost - by no means were the Australians irresistible. Simply, Ponting and his players gave their opponents a chance to pluck defeat from the jaws of victory, an opportunity they grabbed with both hands.

In the Australian, Mike Coward argues that the Akmal brothers must shoulder much of the blame for Pakistan's predicament.

This is especially so of vice-captain and wicketkeeper Kamran, who dropped Hussey on three occasions on Tuesday and yesterday missed a regulation diving leg-side catch offered by Siddle off Mohammad Sami. Siddle was then 25 and the total at 8-350. It was another dreadful and embarrassing lapse. If Kamran was inept his younger sibling Umar was simply impetuous. Again. There is no doubt he is going to be a fine Test cricketer, but as irksome as it may be at 19 he must recognise his limits.

For the second time in the match he fell one shy of a half century when seemingly in charge. Following skipper Yousuf's demise to a spectacular if inadvertent return catch by brave Hauritz, the responsibility of winning the match fell to Umar. But at the critical moment he lost his head and endeavoured an arrogant dispatch of Doug Bollinger over mid-on only to miscue to Mitchell Johnson at mid-off. The match and series was Australia's from that point.

Greg Baum in the Age looks at the storyline of the match as a series of regrets, from both teams.

Mike Coward in the Australian looks at Ricky Ponting's recent struggles and argues that at the moment it seems improbable he can make it to England for another Ashes trip in 2013.

Even the greatest of players have form slumps, but those in their 36th year have to withstand greater scrutiny and field endless questions about eyesight and reaction time, especially against shorter and faster deliveries. They are not easy questions to ask of someone of Ponting's stature. Nor are they easy for him to answer.

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Roebuck notes that Shane Watson needs help, with virtually none of his team-mates in strong form.

Marcus North is a worse starter than pea soup and will be hard-pressed to retain his place in Hobart. Brad Haddin's counter-attacks have lacked conviction. At present, it's not so much an order as a disorder.

In the Age, Chloe Saltau considers North's chances of playing in Hobart and looks at some of the other options, while Will Swanton in the Sydney Morning Herald looks at Watson's nervous nineties.

Peter Lalor in the Australian also considers the comic nature of Watson's missed hundreds.

The first time a man trod on a garden rake and was struck in the face, one imagines it wasn't that funny. The second time it happened there was the odd guffaw (think the Ashes). By the third time the audience could see it coming and the laughs were rising from the belly as the handle rose towards the hapless comic's nose. It's all the funnier because you know it's coming. When Watson hits the 90s, Australians flock to television sets and seats in the outer. For most batsmen, such a migration would be in anticipation of the approaching ton. Not here. This is theatre of the cruel. Bad home video show stuff. You just got to watch.

Peter Roebuck writes in the Sydney Morning Herald that Australia's bowlers have a problem. On their most penetrating days they are intense and threatening, but when things don't go their way they fail to read the signs.

Top-class operators recognise the need to put overs and spells together. Malcolm Marshall had few off days. Doubtless rhythm did periodically desert him. On those occasions, he'd drop his pace, reduce his variations and focus on line and length. Little ground was lost in the hard times. Always he did his work and kept it tight.

...

Frustrated, the flingers drop short and suffer as edges fly over the cordon. Body bowling only works when it is pinpoint. Captains cannot set boards for drunken darts players. With bat and ball Australians need to improve not their best but their worst.

Mike Coward in the Australian considers the contrasting emotions of Ricky Ponting and Mohammad Yousuf, two skippers in their mid-30s, while in the Age, Greg Baum ponders the extent of Australia's decline.

Mike Coward writes in the Australian that the first day at the SCG wasn't just marked by the colour pink but by red faces all round, including the umpire Billy Doctrove, who had what was generally regarded as a good lbw call overturned on review.

Little wonder so many members of the umpiring community are so uneasy about the system. Doctrove deserves an apology, not a crowd of 29,844 believing he made a serious error of judgment. This was not the type of decision for which the technology has been introduced. To suggest Doctrove's decision was a howler is an affront to the umpiring fraternity.

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Roebuck dispels the notion that the SCG pitch was a brute and argues that Australia's batsmen needed to show greater application.

It is on tracks of this sort that famous innings are played. Grafters like Bill Lawry, Ken Barrington, Hanif Mohammad and others prided themselves on their ability to dig in until conditions improved. They displayed enough grit to tar a road.

Greg Baum in the Age believes the second Test is as unrecognisable from the first as Sydney is from Melbourne, Ben Dorries in the Courier-Mail wonders why cricket must be delayed by the lightest of rain, and in the Australian, Peter Lalor looks at Phillip Hughes' day.

Ahsan Butt, in his blog in the Dawn, calls for the inclusion of Umar Gul for the second Test in Sydney to form a three-pronged pace attack with Danish Kaneria as the spinner. Pakisan, he says, also face problems with their batting and wonders what's prompting the board from not drafting in Younis Khan.

The selection committee, supposed to take a decision on Monday, finally met on Wednesday and decided, “it is not like the team is losing just because he isn’t there,” (impeccable logic) and wondered, “Who will he replace there? Various batsmen have scored some runs here [Melbourne] so it might be unfair to drop them.” Welcome to the world of our selection committee, where the likes of Faisal Iqbal making a 40 and Misbah-ul-Haq making 60 after innumerable failures and dropped catches, means that it’s fine and dandy to keep the country’s best number three out of the side.

Adnan Sipra, writing in the Daily Times, says Pakistan had several positives to take from the defeat in Melbourne. The confidence of Umar Akmal and the raw energy of Mohammad Aamer being the most notable among them. The visitors, he says, are also not short of options. Younis Khan remains a potential call-up, so does Shoaib Malik in place of Faisal Iqbal.

The problem, however, lies not merely in the options available but how best to utilise them. Had it not been for a poor first-day performance at the MCG, so desperately lacking in commitment and self-belief, the first Test wouldn’t have required Ponting’s obvious desire to make it more competitive and appealing for the large crowds present. The SGC and its spinner-friendly conditions should simply invite Yousuf to sit his team down at the pre-match team-talk and invoke a recent, popular slogan: “Yes, we can!”